Micro-surgical operations in particular often require several hours of time, during which, however, the surgeon must work with intense concentration. Even in medical practices such as the ones of ear, nose and throat specialists or eye specialists, there are situations in which the doctor must remain in a seated position for a long period of time during the treatment. Every kind of inconvenience of a physical nature should be eliminated under such conditions, since they can significantly reduce concentration. Such a physical inconvenience may be seen in the fact that the surgeon has to sit for hours at a time on a chair for surgeons that might be covered only with an upholstered cushion. Individual expressions of dissatisfaction on the part of the medical profession are reason to take up this problem.
From DE-OS 21 32 741 a seat cushion is known that has a large number of resilient pins spaced from one another, several of which may be rounded off into a mushroom shape. When a person sits on this seat cushion, these pins bend to the side in one direction or another, depending on the local surface pressure on each of these pins. Depending on the hardness of the material of the seat cushion, and thus the pins, they are either partially or completely bent over. The person sitting on them will thus sit to a certain extent free-floating on the seating surface formed by the pins. This is not well-suited to alleviate the physical discomforts of a surgeon during hours-long operations.
From U.S. Pat. No. 4,953,913 a seat cushion is known, the interior of which is formed of pegs that are spaced from one another and that form the supporting surface, and that are presumably made of a foam material. It must be assumed that these pegs also carry out the deflection movement under weight that was described above. In any case, this seat cushion cannot perform a contour-related, weight relief function.
As has already been mentioned, the seat according to the invention is to find application in micro-surgery in particular. The seat cushions according to the state of the art are completely unsuited for this purpose, since the seat cushion on which the surgeon sits in a, so to speak, free-floating fashion, allows small movements that are inconsistent with the precision with which the micro-surgical procedures have to be carried out.